A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
