A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Constructing the squad from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred 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 made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
