Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 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 launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
