Just over twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
