Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event 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 first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
