Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new 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 sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
