Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
