Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, 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, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
