Just over twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
