Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and planned to attain the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
