A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 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
