A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
