Approximately one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
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 heart from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
