A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
