Just over a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first 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 endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
