Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event 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 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 sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
