Just over twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
