A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
