Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
