A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
