A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
