Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking 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. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
