Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time 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 sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
