A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
