A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
