A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project 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 center ever since and has a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
