Just over one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing 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 monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
