A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging 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 decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
