A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
