Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
