Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
