A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“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 understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, 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 variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
