Approximately one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, 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 recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
