Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
