Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut 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 sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
