A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
