A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track 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 monumental task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that passes focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, 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 variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
