A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the America, 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 advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
