A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this race 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 United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
