A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
