Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
