Approximately a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 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 not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
