A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“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 noted recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
