Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has required a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut 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 monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
