Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
