A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
