Approximately twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
