Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has required a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported 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?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
