A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
