Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by focus 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 likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
