Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
