Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
