Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
