Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
