Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at over 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
