Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately 100 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 never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault 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 no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
