Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
