Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has involved a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough 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 implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
