A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
