A little more than a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
