Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be 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 remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
