A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
