A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
