A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
