A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
