A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
