Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
