Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first 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 cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
