Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track 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 monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
