Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
