Approximately one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
