Just over one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad 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 operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
