A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta