A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
