A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough 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 comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
