A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first 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 cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower staff to take charge. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
