A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with around 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 advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
