Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural 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 endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
