Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
