Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing 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 monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
