Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
