Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with around 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 advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that passes focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
