Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
