A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
