Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“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 accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
