A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
