Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
