Approximately one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
