A little more than twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
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 assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
