Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
