A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
