A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
