A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
