Just over twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
