Approximately a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
