Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing 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 sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
