Approximately one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
