Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track 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 never-ending task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming 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 commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
