Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly 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 ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization 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 turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
