A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain 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’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
