A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
