Just over one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
