Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has involved a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
