Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team 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 existing team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
