Just over one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
