Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
