Just over twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last 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 believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
