A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the official approval as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
