A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac 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, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
