A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
