A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount 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 aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
