A little more than twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
