A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
