A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and intended to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
