Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
