Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
