A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as F1's latest participant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
