A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne 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 endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
