Approximately one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
