A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the project across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
