Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
