Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las 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 US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
