Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days 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 monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
