Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
