Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety 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 escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta