Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
