A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
