Approximately a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You might get a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix 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 existing team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta