A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One 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 don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon 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 deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
