Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
