A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
