A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of 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 distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
