Just over one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling various components of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
