Approximately one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
