A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit 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 challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
