Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
