A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia 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 cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
