Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
