Just over a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
