Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne 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 adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
