A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
