Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
