A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
