Just over twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from nothing has required a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
