Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the center to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
