A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
