Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
