Approximately a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
