Just over one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
