Approximately one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
