Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
