Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
