A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
