Just over a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
