Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
