A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
