Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“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 existing team you won't have the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
