Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
