Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has involved a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“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 existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process 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 plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta