A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
