A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
