Just over twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
