A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
