Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
