Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
