A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar 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.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
