A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling various components of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
