Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
