A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “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 increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
