Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize 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, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
