Just over twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that passes focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader talks to a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
