🔗 Share this article

Approximately twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Melbourne

At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.

“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.

“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”

With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.

“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement after that.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort

In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.

“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.

Apollo Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”

So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on various components of the program across a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta