A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta