A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably 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 this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
