A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a amused expression when considering the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
