Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
