Just over one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
