Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
