Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
