Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating 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 existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
