Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, 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 traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
