Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
