A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester 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 development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed 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 function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, 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 Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
