A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
