Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project 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 chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
