Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, 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 these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
