Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume 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,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested 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 reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
