Just over one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
