A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
