Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
