A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has required a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix 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 possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
