Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
