A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
