A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently 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 belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
