A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
