Approximately twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
