Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
