A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
