Just over twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
