Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
