Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, 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 NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
