Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
