Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
