Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
