Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
