Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
