Approximately one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
