A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project 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 newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations 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 earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
