A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds 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 project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
