A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize 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 embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
