A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the squad 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 show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
