Approximately twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has required a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the America, with around three months 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 sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
