A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
