Approximately one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first 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 not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
