Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed 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 we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
