Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
