Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
