Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, 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 technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing 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 established team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
