Approximately a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume 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,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
