Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural 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 technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
