A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
