Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track 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 cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
