Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar 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.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
