Just over twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
