A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
