Approximately a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred 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 aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
