Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 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 has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta