Approximately a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
