Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
