A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
