Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
