Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
