A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
