A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
