Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
