Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
