A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
