Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
