A little more than twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
