A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
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 make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly 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 people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
