Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building 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 F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely 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 setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the project across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
