Just over one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
