Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
