A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
