🔗 Share this article

A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as F1's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 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 adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.

“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”

An Unprecedented Challenge

Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Building an Formula One team from nothing, 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 rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”

With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.

“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Effort

In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”

To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.

NASA Blueprint

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”

What Lies Ahead

The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta