Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove 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 aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the program across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
