🔗 Share this article

Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.

The Countdown to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.

“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Task

Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”

With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”

Driver Lineup and Team Building Push

In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”

To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.

Space Mission Model

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.

“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

What Lies Ahead

The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta