Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked 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. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
