Just over one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have 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 our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
