A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
