A little more than twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
