Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
