Just over one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
