Just over twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
