Just over a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than 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 tackling distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
