Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
