Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
