A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the organization from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
