A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
