Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission 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 supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
