A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
