Approximately a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated 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 young American Colton Herta
