Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
