A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
