A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make 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 perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
