Just over one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
