Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
