Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
