Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
