Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be held 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 first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
