Just over twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted 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 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
