A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
