Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
