A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia 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 conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know 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 adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
