Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
