Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
