Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, 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 opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, 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 it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
