A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO echoed this 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,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
