A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing 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 task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, 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 rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect 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 accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
