A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over 100 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 challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta