Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
