Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they take to the track 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 challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
