Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
