A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
