Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
