Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed 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 says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now at over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
