Approximately twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
