Just over twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
