A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“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 accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won'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 up to more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
