A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored 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?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new 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,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
