A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
