A little more than a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
