Approximately twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the project in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
