Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural 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 task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
