Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
