Approximately twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
