Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
