A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
