Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
