Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has truly matched the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
