Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
