Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, 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 Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
