Just over twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
