A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
