Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
