Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta