Just over twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
