Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
