A little more than twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
