Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Building the team from nothing has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
