Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
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 range of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
