Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
