A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne 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 sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center 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 structure, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
