Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, 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 won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
