A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, 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 decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta