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A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.

“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”

With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.

“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Effort

In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.

Space Mission Inspiration

“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta