Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect 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,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
