Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing 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 aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
