Just over twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
