Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
