A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
