Just over twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-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 truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta