Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately 100 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 sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
