A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
