Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
