A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at over 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
