A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's latest participant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac 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 CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
