Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up 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 Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
