A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
