A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, 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 akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
