A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
