Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
