A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing 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 aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
