A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester echoed this he felt 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. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
