Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
