Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
