A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
