Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“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 goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
