Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
