Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of 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 from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at over 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
