Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has entailed a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
