A little more than one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
