A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing 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
