Just over twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
