A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
