A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
