Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, 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 achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
