A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid 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 Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
