A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
