Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
