Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing 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 determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
