Just over one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
