Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
