Approximately one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
