Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, 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 chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
