A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly 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 experience.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
