Just over twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
