Approximately twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, 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 won't have the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
