Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
