Approximately a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
