Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
