Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
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 Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
