Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
