Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit 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 challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
