A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
