A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
