A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
