Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at over 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
