Just over twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” 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 stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
