A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be 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 believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
