Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
