A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining 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 enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
