A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 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 rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
