Approximately twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has required a hectic pace of work 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 know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make 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 seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
