Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
