Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to attain the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
