Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as F1's latest participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
