A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
