A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should 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 race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
