Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when considering the ride.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
