A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, 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's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
