Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming 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 feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
