A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first 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 sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
