Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
