🔗 Share this article

Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.

The Tight Timeline to Australia

At the season finale of the season to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.

“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.

“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to alter cultural approach.”

With each passing day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.

“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”

Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push

In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.

NASA Blueprint

“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program in a different facilities.

“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is far more efficient and faster.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta