A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta