Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
