Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
