Just over twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
