Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
