Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
