Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
