Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology 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 signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
