Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
