Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix 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 organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
