A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
