Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
