A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, 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 advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “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, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
