A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations 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 achievement in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, 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 comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
