A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
