🔗 Share this article

A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.

“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.

“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”

With every day that passes focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.

“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,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Push

In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.

Space Mission Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program in a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”

Upcoming Challenges

The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta