Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
