Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
