Approximately twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia 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 conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling 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 communicates with a manager 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 hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
