Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
