Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the team from nothing has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
