Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
