Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time 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 never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
