Approximately one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
