Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 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 opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
