A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has required a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
