A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
