Approximately one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around 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 never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
