A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
