Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
