A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
