Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport 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 echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
