Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
