A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Building the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time 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 sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
