A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly 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 team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
