A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
