Approximately one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred 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 challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
