A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
