A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So 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 prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
