Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
