A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
