A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of 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 tackling various components of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
