A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now at over 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
