A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, 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, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
