Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
