Just over twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent 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 wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
