A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
