A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
