Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With each passing day that passes focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize 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 non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
