Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
