A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
