Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount 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 remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
