A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
