Just over twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 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 launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “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 thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
