Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
