Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
