Approximately a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets 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 feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
