A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held 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 never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta