Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta