A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
