A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely 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, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
