Approximately one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, 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 variety of project teams all working on various components of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
