A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne 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 conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
