A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
