Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
