Just over twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
