A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time 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 task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses minds are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “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 aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers 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 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
