A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
