Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
