A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO 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. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
