A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
