Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
