A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
