Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough 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 embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
