Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around 100 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 cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
