Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
