A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
