Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has involved a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
