Approximately twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
