🔗 Share this article

Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.

“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.

“Establishing an Formula One 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 established team you won't have the chance to transform cultural approach.”

With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Push

In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.

NASA Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta