Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
