Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
