Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
