A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing 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 cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
