Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project 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 ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face 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. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
