A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first 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 task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
