Approximately a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be 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 our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
