Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time 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 task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
