A little more than twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
