A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's latest participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing 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 monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“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,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing 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 Team Building Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
