A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are sharper on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
