Approximately one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
