Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut 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 monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed 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 operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
