Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
