Approximately one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
