A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“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,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
