A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
