A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
