Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation 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 since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
