Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
