A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
