Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing 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 never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that passes focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work 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 this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
