A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
