A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
