A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has required a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
