A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has involved a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently 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,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
