A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
