A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
