Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track 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 never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, different from the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, 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 project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
