A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
