A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
