Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
