A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
