Approximately twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
