Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
