Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
