A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
