A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
