A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
