Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
