A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
