Approximately one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix 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 existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta