A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track 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 challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
