Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale 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 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
