Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time 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 conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager communicates with a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
