🔗 Share this article

Approximately a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Constructing the organization from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.

“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”

With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.

“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Hiring Push

In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.

Space Mission Model

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, 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 usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission at a variety of locations.

“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”

What Lies Ahead

The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta