Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
